Monday, April 15

Gold crashes; turns out America not doomed after all.

I just couldn't say it any better than this: "All those ads on the sidebars that flashed at us for years: by Christmas, you will no longer know America. The web 'articles' assuring us that in a year, we would be trading our children for rations and ammo. The endless links that inserted themselves into serious discussion, that led to the anonymous billionaire who oh-so-sadly assured us that he was very-very-sorry and wished-it-wasn't true: but Doom Was Coming." (hyperking)

"On one hand you have established economists, who believe the government has tools at its disposal to address a crisis. These tools include deficit spending and a violent expansion of the Fed's balance sheet.

"Conversely you have critics who slam the arrogance of economists and central planners, and who have predicted that all of this economic acrobatics would result in an economic collapse, hyperinflation, and an explosion in the price of gold. Gold is important to their worldview, because it represents a quasi-money that's not tied to any government or central bank.

"Investing in gold is a rejection of government money and finance. Money flowing into gold-related assets represents a belief that rocks (however shiny they are) are a better place to invest than human endeavors (like stocks)." ...

"...ultimately, the decline of gold and the rise of stocks is a big trend that everyone should cheer.

"The huge corpus of economic research, which has informed the US' efforts to stimulate the economy, is not a pile of garbage. You can do a lot without blowing things up, as the goldbugs claimed would happen.

"And more broadly, this represents a breaking of the fever, and perhaps a return to thinking that humans aren't such a horrible disappointment."